Pages

June 5, 2014

Seeing one of your favorite players retire is not a fun
thing to go through, especially when the player was one of the best at their
position.

Mariano Rivera retired last season, now making me cringe
anytime Joe Girardi makes a call to the bullpen. However, I did notice one
advantage to Rivera hanging up his spikes – more autographs on the market.

Right now, Rivera is listed as having 297 autograph
cards, according to the Beckett database. His first autograph cards appeared in
1996 Leaf Signature. He had a number of signed cards in the mid-2000s in sets
like Triple Threads and Co-Signers. But there were just a handful of cards in
2011, and none from Topps in 2012 (but his signed cards did show up in Panini and
Upper Deck).

Last year, he also had just a handful of signed cards hit
the market – and only in high-end sets.

Besides being Mariano Rivera and a New York Yankee, the
other appeal of his autograph is his beautiful signature. He is probably in the
top five when it comes to signatures in any sport.

The real culprit in bringing more Rivera signature cards to the market seems to be Panini. It has included Rivera autographs in nearly all of its baseball releases. Even though some of the cards have been limited, something is still better than something.